


neither house cat nor hero

by ryyves



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Abusive Behavior, Catra in the Fright Zone, Catra is incredibly Scorpio energy, F/F, Gen, Pre-Catradora, Self-Harm, past and present Catra and Adora, set in S1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26031211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: Catra is in her bedroom and the war is going on.Or: an exploration of empty space.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	neither house cat nor hero

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a play on _in our bedroom after the war._ I'm in the middle of s5 and Catra is my favorite character so I put this together in 2 days so I can get back to the watching.
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you're triggered by self harm, it's contained exclusively in the italicized sections. Proceed safely.

The new cadet has black hair, so Catra doesn’t like him. He’s assigned to her old unit the day after Shadow Weaver is imprisoned — the old windowless dorm, two of its beds unoccupied, its memories of long nights laughing and being told off by officers. Catra sees him laughing with Kyle in the mess hall at breakfast, that black, black hair in the green light.

She knows he has nothing to do with Shadow Weaver, but she keeps an eye on him all day. Shirking duties, she watches the team sparring, Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio a fluid unit, the new kid steady on his feet but slow.

With green light between her and Shadow Weaver, Catra knows that it’s only a matter of time before Lonnie’s squad grows back to five, even six. Adora a lost cause, Catra abandoned for a room with a slightly wider bed and more space to train when she can’t sleep. Catra feels off all day, her skin prickled with goosebumps, chills running through her at every stray thought. She keeps her shoulders back, her chin up, her eyes a wall between herself and the world. She keeps her claws sheathed.

A girl is a weapon, but the girl is walking the halls where another girl laughed and grabbed her arm. She is ghosting after Lonnie and Rogelio, careful not to be seen. She is imagining the body set out in the courtyard, silently carted away. She could do that, if she wanted to, and given what she’s gotten away with, she could get away with this.

These thoughts unsettle her, so she tucks in early. When the door closes behind her, she stumbles to her bed and falls back on it without looking. Everything is a trust fall if there’s nothing you can trust. In the green glow, the ceiling has a loose bolt. Catra makes a note to fix that, or to get Scorpia to do it. It makes her feel better, making plans.

It is long after dark when she picks her way down to her old dorm. All doors open to her with her badge, and lights come on along the wall inside. She hears groaning, slurred and sleepy, Rogelio’s deep growl and Kyle’s sudden and distressed yelp.

“Am I barging in?” Catra says. “I’m so sorry.”

“What do you want?” says Lonnie, ever confrontational. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

“Oh, I know. But, see, I wanted to say hello to the new guy.”

The four of them lie in lumps under their blankets, the bed closest to the door obscured by unfamiliar shoulders. As she speaks, Lonnie rises. Rogelio drags a hand down his face, swinging his legs of his top bunk. As is the nature of soldiers, sleep quickly dissolves into defensiveness.

“Catra, is it?” says a voice she doesn’t recognize.

She leans against the doorframe and surveys the space, the way its atmosphere has changed so quickly in a day. All of them have blurry, confused eyes, and all of them are looking at her. “Force Captain Catra, to you.”

“Oh. Woah. Okay. Did I do something to you?”

She doesn’t have to look at him yet, she thinks, but she does. “Yeah. You’re sleeping in my bed.”

For a second, he looks incredulous. He sits up in Adora’s old bed and pushes a lock of hair off his brow. Then he laughs. It’s sharp and sudden and it buries itself deep in Catra. She scowls. She knows how cold her expression can be, and she holds that coldness like ice in her mouth.

“Did I not make myself clear?” she says.

Kyle says, “You didn’t make anything clear. Go to bed, Catra.”

“I didn’t ask your input. I’m asking Rookie here to get out of this room.”

As she says it, the room goes silent. It crawls under Catra’s skin, and she wishes the lights were off, so no one else could see her.

The new kid rises, his face drawn. “I’m not a rookie.”

“Raised by the Horde, blah, blah, yeah, I know. We’ve all got the same story. But this unit is under my command, so I’m telling you to pack your things and go back to whatever unit you came from.”

“Isn’t this a little harsh?” says Kyle, his meek voice rising in pitch. “I mean, he’s a good fighter, and we’re down two people.”

Catra lunges into the room and Kyle shrinks back, even though he’s several yards from her.

“I’ll decide what’s too harsh.” She can feel the weight of all their eyes on her, their disapproval, their anger. Their wide eyes. She trembles with it.

But she’ll have time to unpack it all later, in her own room, because she knows she can’t stay here. She can’t let them see her beside her old bed, in the space she used to exist in. She can’t ever be that girl again, trusting Adora because she’d never seen what hid in Adora’s heart.

When the new kid speaks, his voice is measured but hesitant, which means she is winning. “It’s too crowded. They did some, um, moving people around, relocating, I guess. So I can’t just go back.”

Catra’s voice is a snarl. “I don’t care. I don’t want to see you here.”

He throws up his hands. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me again.”

Just like that. It was so easy.

She watches in silence as he packs his few things, his hair shifting like live shadows with every motion. When he’s gone, Catra stoops beside the bed and smooths the covers. The last time she’d been in this room, she’d just learned Adora’s truth. But it feels right, to be crouched on the bottom of this bunk bed. She can see the shape of an old drawing. Her and Adora, chalked in when they were kids, Adora’s face scratched across. All of it covered with a thin layer of green paint.

It makes her sad.

The past means nothing in the Horde. You take what you’ve learned and go forward with it. You hold it in your chest like a lifeline, but one drop of nostalgia could corrode you alive.

Lonnie crosses the room to stand in front of Catra, her chest puffed up. “You don’t get to just walk in here and boss people around.”

“I think I am. That’s what Force Captain means.”

“You didn’t need to do this.”

Catra closes her eyes and breathes. She speaks softly. “Maybe not. But I did it.”

“This isn’t because you think Hordak is replacing Adora, is it?” says Kyle quietly.

“Replacing Adora?” Catra’s voice comes out in a squeak. She laughs.

“Uh. Catra?”

Adora in a rainbow of light, a wall of princesses glowing, the moons catching their light.

Catra’s voice shudders. It doesn’t sound like hers. “You’re mine. You’re _my_ friends. Got it?”

A long silence hangs over them, all of them breathing hard but Catra breathing the hardest. Catra can’t make herself look at the others, Rogelio with his legs dangling over his bunk, Kyle holding his pillow as a means to defend himself. If they slept with knives in the Fright Zone, they’d all be dead come morning.

“You didn’t need to do this,” says Lonnie. Her voice is less confrontational, more sad.

Catra turns to the open door and stops, just for a second, in the doorway, an inch away from shadow.

“You’re a fine team, the three of you. You’ll do fine.”

“You didn’t need to do this.”

“Goodnight,” says Catra, and closes the door.

* * *

In her empty single bedroom, Catra lies on top of her covers while the night gets later. The absence of a warm body, of a hand in her hair or on her shoulder, soothing her to sleep, aches in her like something ripped out. The heart, maybe, and all its dangling arteries. It isn’t cold, but she shivers. She can hear the sound of water through the pipes, the rumbling of impossible mechanisms, but the lack of sleep-heavy breaths is louder.

Catra presses her eyes until they ache, and then she stares listless at the ceiling, at the high window and the empty sky beyond.

She can’t sleep. She lies here every night, her limbs splayed at any angles, her body screaming with the stiffness. Her head goes dull, but her eyes ache more when closed than when open. When she falls asleep, she jolts awake in a dream world.

Tonight she wakes, startled, in a room that isn’t hers. Despite the absolute dark, she can see the shapes of the bedframe, the outline of the door, the glint of a small badge on the bedside table. She reaches out, caught in the confusion of sudden wakefulness, and closes her hand around it.

Its cold sends a shiver through her and she squeaks.

Sitting up, Catra folds her legs under her and holds the badge like a talisman in one hand. If she holds it close, nothing can hurt her. Nothing can come through her door and drag her away. If she holds it, the world bends to her will — just the Fright Zone now, but soon the Woods. Soon Bright Moon and all of Etheria. She sniffs, and realizes how close she is to crying.

Still holding the badge, she rubs furiously at her tears. Her body shakes when she hiccups. She is so small in a room as big as this one, its window so high she would need a running start to reach it.

She gets out of her room. She walks softly through the halls, leaving claw marks in the walls. When she was a kid, she left claw marks to prove that she could leave something behind, no matter where she went. Now she has a future to look toward, a legacy to leave. And she became a person who could do that all on her own. Forget Adora, forget Shadow Weaver, forget their empty promises that Catra drank like water. Forget the fact that she is still choking it out, asphyxiating on it.

She still holds the badge in a fist beside her heart. She could stab herself through with it, and she wonders, briefly, if the badge itself is a threat.

When she steps outside, the sickly dark of the interior dissipates. The night is navy and clear, the pastel moons high in the sky. Catra climbs to the highest place in the Fright Zone, an old haunt discovered when she was a kid and later let Adora in on. The wind buffets her. At the top, she sways; the world stretches dizzily away from her — the blue glow of the Whispering Woods, tangled and labyrinthine, miles of metal beneath her feet. If she fell from the railing, now, would she stick the landing?

Adora always told her to be careful. Adora never let her fall. Her hands around Catra’s waist, giggling, pulling her back toward the door. Saying, “Don’t scare me like that.”

Catra lies back on the flat metal surface, perfect for two kids moongazing. Hand in hand.

It’s so big, now. She lies in the center and stretches out her arms until she takes up the whole space.

Once the world was dizzy with stars. Every fragment of night dazzled with its light, like exit holes. The universe ripped apart with them.

Catra watches the sky for a long time before she turns on her side and curls into a ball. The badge pin pierces the heel of her hand and she yelps. It skitters across the ground when she pulls it out; the moment she releases it from her hand, her whole body tenses. She lunges at it, grasps it inches from the drop, and breathes a sigh of relief.

Though the small trickle of blood stains its shining surface, Catra fastens it to her shirt, her hands shaking.

She doesn’t realize she’s growling for a long time.

Below her, the Fright Zone is big and empty, and somewhere Hordak is looking over it all, his perfect machine. Catra’s hand aches, and she presses the puncture so it hurts more. Her breath comes heavy.

She is far from perfect. She was far from second-best, her dreams always beyond some locked door. But the heavy badge over her heart means she’s worth something, now, if never before. Ache or no ache, she is Force Captain, and she is magnificent.

Catra looks out past the border of the Fright Zone, where its insect-like greens give way to the dark tangle of the Whispering Woods. She can’t see through the first line of trees, but she keeps trying.

But she doesn’t need to. She’s standing on top of the world. She is taller than anything imaginable. She could put her foot on the whole world.

She looks hard, straining her night vision. Adora is beyond that, sleeping soundly, not thinking of Catra, and wearing princess clothes.

Adora is becoming everything she hated.

For a second, Catra thinks she sees lights in the Wood. They rush between the trees like the sun on metal. Her heart stutters, and she chokes out a giddy sob. Not now, she begs, not with her lids and limbs heavy. Not while she’s not where she’s supposed to be.

But if she were the first to spot a siege, well, then she would be most valuable.

Nothing makes a sound but the wind. Catra leans out over the railing to see clearer, to see princesses, a rebel force armed with magic. She stays like that, squinting, long after the glow fades, trying to make out anything, some proof that she was right. That she can bring something of value to Hordak.

“Come on, come on,” she mutters.

There is nothing there. None of the fortress’s blinking lights are for her. She is completely alone.

* * *

_“Catra! Catra, get back here.”_

_Shadow Weaver’s voice slides down the corridors, curling around Catra’s chest as she runs. Catra runs faster than she’s ever run, except from Shadow Weaver. Her name echoes, and cadets she passes turn away from her. No one wants to witness her shame, and she is both grateful and bitter._

_Catra is around thirteen and has never been in combat, but she knows this is what it would feel like: running from a voice that doesn’t bother to chase her, that echoes off the walls. Catra’s breath is almost loud enough to drown it out, a wounded animal in her throat. She is alone, without a team, without Adora, but her name swirls around in her head. Her thoughts go fuzzy._

_And then, as she turns a corner, the walls lurch. Catra staggers, wheeling backwards. The dark gathers in her periphery, sliding toward her but going still when she looks at them head-on. She glances around, searching for an escape room, but there’s nothing but the corridor ahead and the corner behind. Her hands clench into fists, and when she relaxes them, she extends her claws._

_“You’ve always been a failure”, Shadow Weaver is saying. It’s nothing new. Catra wears_ failure _the way she wears her two-toned eyes, in the open, where everyone can see. And when the world sees you as a broken piece, you let them. You play into it._

_Catra, Catra, second-best at everything she does. Just enough of a slacker to get off the hook every time. Just lazy enough to rile up her unit, just enough of a menace that sometimes, sometimes, Adora steps back too. Her foot sliding back, her chest heaving as if she’d been hit._

_After that, when Catra turned and bolted, she didn’t come out for hours._

_She never wants to see that expression on Adora’s face again._

_The shadows in her periphery cackle in Shadow Weaver’s voice, while the sorcerer’s real voice grows louder behind her. Snarling, Catra spins, slashing at shadows. For a second, they recoil; for a second, she is sated._

_“Catra, please, come here.” Shadow Weaver pitches her voice in a way that might soothe injured animals but doesn’t soothe Catra._

_“Never,” says Catra. “I’m not your house cat. Leave me alone.” She knows what her voice sounds like to the other cadets, desperate, humiliating, but she won’t lie down quietly. If she endures laughter in the mess hall for weeks, so be it._

_The shadows around her grow. Catra’s body whips back and forth. She isn’t sure, anymore, that Shadow Weaver will come from the direction from which she’s been running._

_And then, as though beckoned, something large and solid rises behind Catra. And Catra knows, a second before she whirls, that it’s Shadow Weaver, and she knows that if Shadow Weaver sees her crying, she’s dead. Her body tenses. She holds her hands ready to strike, but the shadows that block her path don’t move._

_“I’m trying to teach you a lesson,” snarls Shadow Weaver._

_“You’re not teaching me anything. You’re just a cruel old woman and you hate me.” Her voice breaks like a child’s half her age; she shivers with it._

_Shadow Weaver sighs, an ominous sound. “Look at me, child.”_

_“Let me go.”_

_“Oh, you’re free to. I’m not holding you anywhere.”_

_Catra growls. She bites her lip to cut it short._

_And for a moment, nothing. The low chatter and the clang of footsteps in the corridor beyond, people basking in the green lights. A shadow falls like water across Catra’s back. She jumps and hisses._

_“If you don’t want to learn, that’s up to you.”_

_Catra says nothing. By hiding one weakness, she is revealing another._

_Shadow Weaver says, “Pathetic.”_

_Trembling, Catra wipes her eyes, knowing how bloodshot looks on her multicolored scleras. She takes a bracing breath and turns to face Shadow Weaver. At first, she keeps her eyes on the sorcerer’s robes, but she tells herself that she is not one to back down to anyone. She meets those masked eyes._

_The crimson of the Black Garnet has always reminded Catra of blood, the blood she most often saw coming out of herself. Pressing on a cut, peeling away the bandage, nicking herself with her own claws. It makes her dizzy, now. Shadow Weaver is inscrutable. The corridor is cold with sunless things._

_“I’m not trying to upset you,” says Shadow Weaver, her voice sweet, her mask blank and shining._

_Catra throws back her shoulders and laughs. Incredulous, she says, “You weren’t trying to hurt me? Really? I guess we both have a few lessons to learn, huh?” She has learned that if she fights and pushes back, no one can see her weaknesses. No one can have any power over her. No one can control her, force her to submit. But her cheeks are still damp and she can’t dry them out._

_“Yes,” says Shadow Weaver. “This… defiance is exactly the thing we need to talk about.”_

_Catra tests her fingers, pleased to discover she can still move. That Shadow Weaver isn’t here to hold her by force, to pin her down with magic until Catra apologizes. That Catra will never apologize, not to anyone but especially not to her. Still, Catra is trembling._

_When Shadow Weaver reaches out, it takes everything in Catra to not flinch. Her hand lands on Catra’s shoulder, cool and sharp. Catra narrows her eyes as Shadow Weaver squeezes. Her hand gently slides down Catra’s upper arm._

_Shadow Weaver says, “Oh, child. You are right to be afraid of me.” It is almost a purr, and Catra would know. “And you would be right to learn.”_

_And then the pressure is gone and both of the sorcerer’s arms are at her side, her hair billowing around her head. And Catra realizes that the shadows were fading away the whole conversation, soft and slow in her periphery._

_When Shadow Weaver turns the corner and the last of her shadows recede, Catra gasps, shaking. She props her hands on her knees and breathes until she’s steady enough to move. Adora will hear a story from Shadow Weaver that isn’t the truth, because Adora wasn’t there. Catra is alone here. She is alone anywhere._

_She makes her way to the closest bathroom and closes the door. It is empty, no cadets waiting to watch her struggle. Shuddering, she props herself on the sink, her elbows and her wrists. Her hair hangs into the basin. Her breath comes out in painful shudders, and then just in hiccups. She can’t see anything but the drain, so she focuses on it, but she casts deep shadows._

_When she can prop herself on the heels of her hands, she looks at her eyes. Capillaries stand out a different color in each eye, tinted by pigment. Her lashes are heavy and dark, and she scrubs them dry. She looks like a monster._

_She locks herself into a stall, and drags her already extended claws down her arms. There will be time enough for defiance later, her trademark insolence. There will be time enough, later, to rule the world. Today she stared into the face of her own weakness and kept staring. And she did it on her own._

* * *

Catra is in her bedroom and the war is going on. She has her blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The high window leaves shreds of light on the cold floor, scraps of it she licks up like a house cat. She is maneuvering troops in her head, units and cannons, on a thousand landmarks she has never seen.

She rarely sits with the other Force Captains in the strategy room, but she sneaks in when they’ve left. She turns the hologram on, sharp teeth on her bottom lip, and the blood in her mouth tastes like victory. Tastes like chewing the inside of her mouth when Adora left, chewing her cheeks to shreds.

Besides, Scorpia fills her in on all the important decisions, and Scorpia has never done anything to suggest disloyalty.

But today, Scorpia is off guarding some pass Catra doesn’t care about, risking her life against Adora’s cronies, commanding Catra’s old unit. Catra sits in one of the chairs in the strategy room and visualizes the feints and lunges she’s been turning over in her head.

Something big is coming for her. For the Horde. For every corner and corridor she calls home. Long gone are the days of capturing individual rebel towns, bringing civilians into their fold. Now, they have an enemy, violent, moon-bright. Now, Catra organizes tactics, orchestrates sieges. She is indispensable.

Still, as she stands in the empty room, she knows they are waiting for some final, fortuitous opportunity. The promise of it prickles from her shoulders to her fingers.

She listens in on the Force Captains in the mess hall, a table away. They glance over at her, their eyes cruel and bright. Catra bristles, but her teeth are sharp and clean and when she hisses, everybody looks down.

And Catra is still watching the Woods for some indication of Adora. She prowls the perimeter; she climbs every ladder and watches like a sea captain. She wants to be the first to sound the alarm. She wants her voice to be the last to call _She-Ra;_ she wants to land the final blow. She can feel it in her hands, the give of golden flesh.

She wants to be able to say, _I did that._

Not the body on the ground, unmoving, but some sort of surrender. Adora in the prison hold, green-lit, her eyes lighting up, maybe, when Catra brings her food. They wouldn’t even have to talk.

And still Catra’s empty room. Those long, silent nights, no breath to punctuate the stillness, no hum of electricity. Still she works herself to exhaustion and falls on top of the covers, and still she can’t fall asleep. One day, soon, the lines of the ceiling will be as familiar to Catra as the shape of Adora’s back.

Except every time Catra imagines Adora’s back, she imagines it with claw marks, bleeding.

Well. Adora was a lousy friend first.

The shape of her shoulders as she’s walking away. The cold wind that slides into the space between them, the grass soft under Catra’s bare feet, the rush of seeing the wide world soured by the expression on Adora’s face, a wonder Catra couldn’t give her.

And she’s always been walking away. Catra just couldn’t see it, before. She let herself get tricked, because she didn’t know better. She didn’t learn.

But she’s learned now. She knows that this room won’t be hers forever. Nothing is forever in the Fright Zone — not what you trusted, not what felt like forever when she had it, heady and wild with promise.

When her badge lights up and Hordak’s voice comes through, saying, _Come see me,_ Catra still shivers. She goes gentle, quiet, and doesn’t breathe the whole time she’s in his sanctum. _An exercise in breathing underwater._

Well. When you’re drowning, there’s nothing to be done but swim down.

“You’re just obsessed with Adora as Shadow Weaver was,” Hordak tells her. Long shadows fall all over his body, his eyes like blood. His eyes seeing her, but not seeing into her.

“No,” says Catra. It comes easy to her tongue, and it isn’t a lie. She tells herself it isn’t.

Adora with her ponytail hanging over Catra when Catra woke up, once a comforting sight; Adora offering Catra her rations when tears prick Catra’s eyes; Adora’s laughter live and electric in the corridors of the Fright Zone. Memories are empty promises. Her past is a dark void, blacker than any moonless night over Etheria. Catra looks at Hordak and covers every image of Adora with those glowing, pale eyes. Behind Catra’s eyelids, She-Ra glows like fire. It aches, but it aches more to remember.

She swallows every shred of longing like ice.

“There is nothing to miss. She made her choice, and I’m a better Force Captain than she would have ever been.”

“Prove it,” says Hordak.

Catra is almost to the door when she says, “You have nothing to worry about.”

* * *

_Catra slinks into the dorm with her tail between her legs. She shuts the door quick behind her, and for a second she leans against it, panting as softly as she can. The lights go out. She surveys the room, its three bunk beds, sleeping bodies on every mattress but one. Adora has her covers pulled up over her crossed legs, her hair down, awake. The fingers tapping against her knees still when she meets Catra’s eyes._

_Adora smiles. Her dimples stand out, her bright teeth and brighter eyes highlighted in the darkness._

_It puts the light back in Catra. The warmth of it slides through Catra’s body, and she shivers the cold out._

_Catra crosses to Adora’s bed, her footsteps soundless. But she stands at the foot of the bed, hesitating. All her thoughts of abandonment rush through her in a burning wave, and the urge to bolt again rises. She knows the things she’s thought about Adora, the imagined abandonments, the bitter taste of Adora’s name in her mouth. But Adora holds her eyes and Catra is not alone anymore._

_It’s past midnight and Adora is smiling. Catra feels herself smile back. Her eyes prickle.“You waited for me.”_

_“Of course I did,” says Adora. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”_

_Catra’s breath shudders. She sits on the edge of the bed and stares out toward the closed door. She can hear the individual breaths of Lonnie, Rogelio, Kyle. “I—”_

_“Where were you?” whispers Adora._

_“I, uh.” Her claws are still extended, and they dig into the mattress. They sink into the bedframe. Adora shifts behind her; for a second, Catra’s stomach lurches, and then Adora takes Catra’s hand and pulls it back. They are so close and Catra has to hold onto her breath. At first Adora just holds Catra’s hand, her palm soft and warm, until Catra retracts her claws. Then Adora touches the tips of her nails, and suddenly Catra is harmless. She pulls both of Catra’s hands out of the mattress and holds them in Catra’s lap from behind._

_“I got in trouble,” says Catra._

_Adora crawls forward and sits beside Catra. She lifts Catra’s arm and leans close, examining, in the near-black, scabs dotting the skin beneath her stripes. Her fingers touch skin, carefully. “What happened?”_

_Catra sighs. Adora is so close to her, and she is worried, the dimples faded from her cheeks. Catra wishes she had nothing to show, no proof of an hour and a half, two hours, hidden in a bathroom stall until her eyelashes were dry. “Nothing. Look, let’s just go to bed. I’ve kept you up too long already.”_

_“Catra.” In Adora’s mouth, it sounds like a promise. “Tell me what happened.”_

_“Shadow Weaver. I mean, me, but she started it.” She’s a kid and a soldier at once, neither house cat nor hero. She sniffs._

_Adora’s hands still on her arms. Catra falls back onto the mattress, and Adora sits above her, looking down with wide eyes, her hair falling over her ears. She is unfathomable, the biggest mystery in all of Etheria. Catra has had a lifetime with Adora, and still hasn’t figured her out._

_“She made you do this?” says Adora._

_Suddenly, Catra is terrified to tell the lie. If she does, Shadow Weaver will find out through Adora, but worse than that, Adora will see Catra as someone too weak to walk away from a fight, a loss, a heartbreak. Catra rolls onto her sides and pulls her knees up. Adora’s hand doesn’t ever leave Catra’s arm._

_“No,” Catra says. “She didn’t do anything. Don’t you understand? She’s never_ done _anything. It was just me. I’m defective.” She lets the word, with all its sharp, metallic edges, hover in the air above them, in the narrow space of their bottom bunk. It tastes as sharp as blood. She covers her face with her hands. “But don’t—don’t tell me I am.”_

_The silence goes on for too long: the uneven intake of Adora’s breath, Catra’s hitched, the world not as much of a cocoon as either of them hoped for. Eyes in every light, every sparkle of electricity and storm of dark. But Adora’s hand is still on Catra, and she is not letting go._

_“Hey,” says Adora, warm and affectionate. Catra doesn’t look up, but she hiccups. “You’re not defective.”_

_When Adora removes her hand, Catra hisses._

_“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” says Adora, and she puts her hand in Catra’s hair. On top of the covers, Catra curls her arms close to her chest and closes her eyes. Adora crawls under the covers but keeps stroking Catra’s hair. Slowly, Catra relaxes into the soft black of sleep. Slowly, she begins to purr._

_She is safe here. She will always be safe here._

_Adora’s groggy voice says, “That’s the Catra I know.”_

* * *

Catra is in her bedroom after the Battle of Bright Moon and the war is not won. There is light everywhere and on the other end of the Fright Zone, Hordak is awaiting a report on her failure. Catra doesn’t know if she will land behind a wall of green light before the day ends, her hands shackled, devouring her rations like an animal. The badge in her hands reflects the light in perfect, prismatic greens. Its sharp beams dance across the walls. She is holding her badge as far away from her as possible in case Hordak’s voice comes through in static, but she is not letting it go.

It is all she has left. Adora in rainbow lights, the whole damn Princess Alliance channeled through her. That smile on her face while she soaked up their power. She knew she was the strongest being alive, and Catra was nothing before her. Like they were little kids always, Adora victorious and Catra laughing it off so it wouldn’t hurt.

Catra laughs now. She throws back her head, and when her cackle turns into a giggle, into a squeak, she doesn’t stop. It pushes up out of her gut, out of her ribs; she aches with the laughing. She lets it fill the room.

And when she’s done, when the ragged, desperate glee goes out of her, she prowls the space. She counts her steps from wall to well, feels the serrated edges of bolts, the sharp dips between sheets of metal. Bright Moon a city on stilts, in glorious golds, metallic as any testament to victory. The wreckage of bots and tanks, canons and cadets.

That’s war, Catra tells herself, but she was left to pick up the mess. To order her unsteady troops home, to oversee officers pushing broken machinery, to keep just a hair away from anyone who would blame her for the light that came out of Adora’s eyes.

Every time Catra closes her eyes, she sees Adora’s. Every time, she shivers.

She shouldn’t have to hide in her room, waiting for the order that would assign her fate. She was almost right.

Defeat tastes like blood and spit and sweat, hers and everyone else’s. She is still tasting it; she is finding it under her fingernails, in the creases of her arms, on her lips. It suffocates her.

It finds her lying prone on her bed because she is too restless to move, too anxious to pace only to find another wall to stop before. Her thoughts are a noisy fog, and she almost misses the knock on her door.

She hears it the second time, a rapid one-two-three. She rises and a shudder goes through her, her tail sticking straight out in fright.

“Who’s—who’s that?” she demands. Her voice sounds shaky, but it’s low and rough so she gives herself the pass.

“It’s me,” says Scorpia’s voice, open and annoying as always. Scorpia doesn’t usually do house calls, ever since that time Catra rose on her tiptoes to snarl in Scorpia’s face that she _will not be disturbed, ever,_ because that’s what it takes for Scorpia to take a hint. “Um, can I come—?”

“No.” Catra bristles. She paces to the door and presses her hands against it, so she will know if it starts to move. More calmly, she says, “No. That’s okay. What brings you here?” She is grasping for composure. She looks at herself the wall mirror, her fizzy hair, dirt on her face, battle-worn and wild-eyed. She looks exactly how she wants to be seen. Dangerous. Holding up a hand, she covers one eye, then the other. Monochromatic, she looks like a different person, colder or kinder in turn. It’s a trick she’s been playing with herself since she was a kid, since she braced her teeth against the shrieking laughter of children to whom the ears and tail were palatable, but whom the eyes unsettled.

Scorpia clears her throat, which is a bad sign. “Hordak wants to see you.”

The glint of the badge in the mirror catches Catra’s eyes. It stares at her, glittering like an eye. Hordak wants to see her. Wants to scold her, skin her, send her alone and frightened from the Fright Zone. As long as she stays behind this door, she is free, but even the air she breathes tastes singed.

“How considerate of him to send you,” says Catra stiffly, and laughs. “We both know if he wanted to talk to me, he’d contact me directly.”

“Oh,” says Scorpia, and Catra thinks that’s going to be that. She is taking her sigh of relief when Scorpia continues. “Except he said he’d been trying, that you’d been holding some sort of radio silence since you left Bright Moon.”

“Is that so?” Catra slides her hand down the mirror, until she’s touching cool glass with just one finger. She goes over to the bedside table and lifts her badge. After fastening it to her chest, she smooths back her hair. She takes these few seconds to herself. Scorpia is not the sort of person she can say _Can’t a girl lick her wounds in peace?_ to, and Hordak is waiting.

As she opens the door, Scorpia is saying, “Actually, he wants to see all three of us.” The renegade princess waits behind Scorpia, balanced on tendrils of her hair. That’s always going to be creepy, Catra thinks. But Scorpia beams. She looks so young when she smiles.

Catra takes a breath, and she doesn’t know if it’s her last breath of freedom. It just tastes like Fright Zone, always something singed in the walls.

Beyond Scorpia, beyond Entrapta, lies a long corridor. It stretches all the way back to Hordak. There is nowhere else to go, no other path to take.

“Okay,” says Catra, and her voice is a locked box. She knows what she’s going to tell Hordak. “I guess we’d better get going.”


End file.
